


The One Where You Fly and I Don't

by mytimehaspassed



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drug Use, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 13:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4837031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s after the fire that Seth starts stealing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where You Fly and I Don't

**THE ONE WHERE YOU FLY AND I DON'T**  
FROM DUSK TILL DAWN: THE SERIES  
Richie/Seth; Seth/Vanessa; Richie/Santanico; Richie/OC(s); Seth/OC(s)  
**WARNINGS** : Violence; murder; underage sex; mentions of suicide and attempted suicide; drug use  
**NOTES** : This is pretty much an AU from the first episode of the second season. So not really where the second season is heading, but some elements have been stolen. Oh, and also some liberties have been taken with canon backstory. 

 

I

It’s after the fire that Seth starts stealing. 

Little things at first, candy bars and bottles of beer and books for Richie, easy enough to slip underneath his jacket or in his backpack after school, easy enough to secret them away from under the gaze of their uncle, so that nobody really notices the pile under his bed that grows and grows (porn mags and CDs and the scarf that Melissa Jimenez had left in Biology, which had smelled like her at first but now smells only of Seth and Seth’s socks when he places it to his mouth and dips his hand beneath his jeans) and grows and grows whenever Seth is reminded of something his father had taught him with a pop-top can in one hand and a belt in the other. 

It’s easy, he’s good at it, and it gives Richie something to brag about in the grade above Seth, even when Seth tells him to never tell anyone, even when Seth places a hand over Richie’s mouth and holds it there and tells him that he won’t let go until he promises - “Fucking promise, Richard.” - to never open it again, especially when the teachers at school start locking their desk drawers as soon as Seth steps into the classroom, especially when their uncle starts putting deadbolts on doors that didn’t have deadbolts before, and Richie smiles and says okay, muffled beneath Seth’s palm, but never stops. 

He graduates to armed robbery in his junior year of high school, a local convenience store that he cases for weeks, sitting outside on one of the bus stop benches pretending to do homework, but really making short little lines on the top of his notebook, one line for every person that walks in, counting in half hour increments. He flirts with older girls and gives them money to go in and buy him beer and he watches them walk in, watches the bored clerk look up and then look away. He flirts with older boys, sends them in, watches the clerk look up and keep looking, following them with his hungry eyes, his hungry mouth. 

“Gotcha,” Seth says, and makes a note in his notebook, not thinking, never thinking. He looks down. 

“Fuck,” he says and scratches it out. And then, “Fuck,” again, as he writes it one more time, bolder, underlined, feeling like a fucking asshole. 

The handwriting is short and neat, innocuous, sandwiched between Calculus notes, and Seth stares at it for a minute, two, closes his eyes, opens them again. It’s a shitty idea, and even more Uncle Eddie will kill him, but he knows that it’s his best shot at getting in and out with the least amount of witnesses, the best shot at making some real money, the best shot of getting out of here. 

He traces the letters one more time and his hands tremble over his brother’s name.

***

Richie is good at casing the place, even better at being bait - a quick study, a natural talent, a fucking prodigy - picking up one magazine and then another, glancing through them, glancing over at the clerk, glancing back, running a hand through his hair self-consciously. He looks back over and smiles, watches the clerk smile, and as he makes his way over to the cash register, empty-handed, he pushes his glasses up his nose and bites his lip coyly. 

The clock on the wall reads 11:28; he has two minutes. 

“Hi,” Richie says, and glances at the clerk’s name tag, “Oliver.” He places both hands on the counter, leans closer. One minute forty seconds. 

“Hi,” Oliver says, and doesn’t move away. His smile is nice, straight white teeth, full lips, laugh lines. He can’t be more than twenty, and Richie guesses he probably either dropped out of college or never went, his bright blue eyes and stoner’s gaze. Richie almost feels bad. Almost. 

One minute. 

“I’ve seen you here before, kind of sucks working the graveyard shift, huh?” Richie absentmindedly plays with the pen on the counter, licks his lips. 

Oliver’s eyes dip down, watching Richie’s tongue, then dart back up to his face again. He shrugs. “It’s not so bad. Sometimes I get to meet nice people.”

Richie smiles. “I’m sure you do.”

Thirty seconds. 

“You ever meet people outside of work?” He runs one finger down the length of Oliver’s arm, holds Oliver’s hand still between them. “You know, hang out?”

Fifteen seconds. 

Oliver nods, and lays his other hand on the counter, close to Richie’s. “I get off at two,” he says. He leans in closer, his mouth almost touching Richie’s mouth. “You want to come back around then?”

The bell above the door rings, but Richie doesn’t let Oliver turn or move away. He places his hands on his face and brings him close, pressing their lips together, and it’s chaste at first, sweet, but then Oliver pulls him closer and Richie lets him, and they’re pushing together, and Richie feels a hand on his back and knows that he should stop, but doesn’t, not until he can feel the gun. 

Seth had told him to make it look real. 

He pulls back and Seth is wearing a ski mask, gloves, and Oliver looks confused for a second, glazed, before he blinks once, twice, and then makes a move for whatever’s under the counter. Seth places the gun against Richie’s temple, his arm around his chest, and says, “Don’t even think about it, asshole.”

Richie has seen enough movies to know how to act: scared, silent, his eyes welling up with tears, breathing hard, looking from Oliver to the gun in his peripheral and then back to Oliver again. He’s pitch perfect, and later the camera footage will be shown on the six o’clock news and he will look at the grainy video stills and then over at Seth, his smile lighting up the whole room. 

Oliver doesn’t move, his hands up in the air, and Seth gestures to the cash register with their father’s gun, tells Oliver to open it up or he will blow a hole in both of them. Oliver starts to cry, tears streaming down his face silently, but he does as Seth asks, placing the bills in one of the plastic shopping bags, his hands shaking, almost useless. 

“You’ve been great, sweetheart,” Seth says when he grabs the bag. “You, too,” he says to Richie, maybe a little bit more affection in his voice than there should be, his lips close enough that Richie thinks he may kiss his cheek, Seth’s breath tickling his face. 

Oliver is still trembling by the register, his hands in the air again as Seth points the gun back at him. 

“We’ll just be going now. Please don’t try anything stupid,” Seth says. “Your little boyfriend here won’t look so hot with a bullet in the brain.” He shakes Richie, and Richie makes a noise that could be described as terror. 

Oliver nods, says, “Okay.” And then again, “Okay.” His voice wavers, his throat sounds thick.

Seth and Richie move towards the door, Seth’s arm warm against Richie’s chest, and, just after the door closes behind him, Seth lets his arm drop, grabbing Richie’s hand. They run. 

Their car had been parked five blocks away, something Seth had boosted in a neighborhood on the good side of town, nothing too flashy, and once they reach it, Seth doesn’t even wait for Richie to buckle his seatbelt before he guns it, driving around a while, shaking tails or calming his nerves or whatever, before finally parking in the back section of an unlit Walmart parking lot. 

“Fuck,” he says, breathless, and then turns to Richie. “We did it.”

Richie grins. “I told you it would work.”

Seth rolls his eyes. “It was my plan, not yours. You fucking remember that, Prodigy.”

Richie laughs. “Yeah, okay.”

Seth turns off the engine and looks out at the vast expanse of blacktop. “We should wait here for a bit, I don’t really want to get caught driving a stolen car away from the scene of a robbery.” 

Richie nods, unbuckles his seatbelt, climbs into the backseat. He rummages around the floor before he finds what he’s looking for, the paper bag he had stashed there this morning when Seth had stolen the car. “Good thing I came prepared.” He takes out the weed and rolling papers, smiles when Seth turns around. 

“Fuck, Richie,” Seth says. “What’d I say about drugs?”

“It’s not like it’s heroin, Seth.” He licks the end of the paper, pinches the joint shut. “Sometimes it’s easier this way.”

Seth climbs over the seat and settles down next to Richie. “Easier to do what?”

Richie shrugs, lights the tip, inhales. “I don’t know. Go to school. Live life.”

Seth takes the joint from Richie and places it between his lips. “Are they still bothering you for skipping grades?”

“Sometimes,” Richie says, and it’s a small, quiet breath in the space between them. He doesn’t like to talk about it, especially to Seth. “It’s not so bad. Only one more year.”

He takes the joint back and makes a circle with the smoke, his mouth shaped like a little o. “Maybe less if we keep this up.” He means the job, he means the money. 

Seth raises his eyebrows. “You think this is a career choice?”

Richie smiles. “Why not?”

***

They fuck that night in the car. It’s not the first time, it won’t be the last. 

Seth pushes against Richie and his teeth are sharp on Richie’s chin and in the morning there will be bruises on Richie’s hips, his thighs, but right now neither of them care. Richie says Seth’s name into the crook of his neck, the small dip of skin there, and Seth says something about how Richie can forget all about Oliver and Richie laughs, one short breath of laughter, and Seth tells him that it’s not funny and grips his jaw, pressing into him again, his mouth swallowing Richie’s mouth, and Richie bites Seth’s lip and when they pull back they’re both covered in blood, and Seth tells him not to do that again, and if he means the biting or kissing someone else, Richie’s not so sure. 

 

 

II

They steal. 

It’s what they’re good at. 

 

 

III

The fourth job: a high-end gentleman’s club on the outskirts of New Orleans, over fifty thousand dollars in the backroom safe, swiped clean. While Seth was telling the ladies to line up on the stage where he can see them, Richie had not only taken the cash, but also liberated a case of Cheval Blanc 1947. On the ride home, he had opened a bottle, shared it with Seth, passing it back and forth, Seth swallowing it with a disgusted look, telling Richie that he’d rather have a cheap beer than whatever the fuck passed for wine. 

The eleventh job: Richie had gotten a bullet in the shoulder and Seth had pulled him out of the bank, his hands turning brown with dried blood. It had been a bad one from the start, too fast, too many unknown variables, and Seth had said I told you so between clenched teeth, five, no ten times. Richie was delirious in the car, had passed out from the pain, from the blood loss, and Seth had pulled over on the side of the road somewhere just past the Cook County line and checked his breathing, his hands shaking over Richie’s lips. Richie had woken up again and pressed his warm mouth to Seth’s fingers, pressed his tongue there, and Seth had told him that he knows of a good doctor, but Richie will just need to hold on for a few more hours. 

“Can you do that?” Seth had whispered, his voice broken and swollen and raw.

And Richie had smiled, his eyes drowsy, and told him that if he couldn’t, he’d be damn sure to come back and haunt Seth’s ass until the end of time. 

The seventeenth job: Vanessa tried to steal Seth’s wallet in a dimly lit restaurant in Biloxi. He caught her red-handed and she had kissed him right on the mouth, her fingers tucked below his belt, just so he wouldn’t make a scene. 

A month later, she was the only one that Seth had ever trusted more than his brother. 

 

 

IV

They get married at a little roadside chapel in Vegas, Vanessa in a short white dress and flip-flops and Seth wearing a rumpled suit and sunglasses to shade his black eye and Richie creating some makeshift bouquet out of fake flowers and ribbons he stole from their hotel lobby, all smiles, the only witness Seth would ever want, and Vanessa gets wasted on Mai Tais and loses three hundred dollars playing the slots and Seth keeps calling her Mrs. Gecko and laughing because it tastes odd even in his mouth. They honeymoon there, beneath the neon glow of the lights, Vanessa swimming in the rooftop pool without a bathing suit, Seth kissing her so hard in the elevator, his hand between her thighs, that a red mark blooms on the side of her mouth and stays there for days. 

They get caught twice by hotel staff, in flagrante, Seth’s big hands around Vanessa’s tiny waist, once in their room after Richie had turned around their Do Not Disturb sign as a joke and the other while in the back of one of the bars, spilled beer and overturned glasses and Seth “accidentally” dropping his packet of cigarettes and getting on his hands and knees to find it but never coming up for air, Vanessa’s gasps and moans loud enough to be heard over the speakers. 

Richie follows them around like a lost puppy and Vanessa thinks it’s cute - this is before she has her friend Patty give him a psychological once-over, this is before she takes a wrong turn in Richie’s apartment one day and finds Seth with his hands on Richie’s cheeks, his mouth on Richie’s mouth, and turns right back around, decides that it’s better if she never mentions it - and Seth keeps him busy, asks him to plan hypothetical heists on napkins, Richie’s tiny handwriting, his sharp brain. Richie isn’t old enough to drink, not for another year, but he has a really shitty fake ID that most of the bartenders don’t scoff at, selling him light mixed drinks and watery beer, enough for him to stay buzzed, but definitely not enough for him to forget the cold, metallic feel of Vanessa’s wedding band when she places a delicate hand on his arm. 

He only sleeps with him once in Vegas, the night after the wedding, Vanessa asleep in the adjoining room. It’s not because he needs it, it’s because he wants it, because he had been waiting for Seth to look at him like he looks at Vanessa, and he knocks on the dividing door, waits until he can hear Seth pad over and pull back the chain. Seth looks sleepy, his hair sticking up in the front, and Richie smiles, says, “Can you stay in here for a bit?”

Seth nods, mostly because he doesn’t want to argue, and closes the door behind him. 

They get into bed, curling together, Richie placing the tips of his fingers on Seth’s bottom lip until Seth opens his mouth. “I’ve missed this,” Richie whispers, tracing Seth’s face with his wet fingers. “I’ve missed you.”

Seth’s voice is warm, thick, as he says, “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

Richie smiles sadly, moves closer, presses his face against Seth’s bare shoulder, the scars there. (This is after the tattoos, after the drunk night in New Orleans, after the bad job in Tacoma, where Seth had created the No Hostages rule and gone and got plastered and paid someone to cover up the permanent memory of the worst night of his life.) Seth places a hand in Richie’s hair, trails his fingers down his neck, his back. 

“I’m always going to be here for you, Richie. No matter what.”

Richie pulls back, his eyes on Seth. “Promise?”

Seth kisses him, sweetly, softly, his fingers in the swell of Richie’s back, warm, pressing solid against him. “Promise,” he whispers, and the word fills Richie’s mouth. 

 

 

V

Richie had inherited what was left of his father’s knife collection. There were only one or two that escaped the fire, another that their uncle had kept since the falling out years before, but that was enough to spark Richie’s curiosity, his interest. 

He practices. In the downtime between jobs, while they plan, Vanessa on a stakeout with cheap sunglasses and a cowboy hat and a lot of thin, short, little dresses (she was better at playing bait than Richie was, maybe because she was lucky, maybe because it was like acting, a talent she picked up once and never put back down), and he would spin the hilts between his fingers, light, like a coin. He gets into fights just to use them, if only for a scare, pulling one of them out of his pocket, the blade thin and sharp, shining in the street lights. 

He practices. He uses them on jobs, when the tellers are a bit rebellious, when the managers think that their paychecks are worth the risk, he picks out the knife from his pocket and lets it lick the side of their necks, their chins, the soft skin there, so easy to draw blood. Seth never says anything, won’t, because knives are a lot cleaner than guns, a lot harder to trace, and won’t leave as many dead. 

(They both know that Richie has killed before, even if it’s only a half remembered dream for Seth, stumbling out of the house in the blaze of the fire, smoke and heat and his father’s lifeless eyes tracking his movements from the couch.)

In a bar, sometimes, drunk on one too many bottles of beer, he will challenge someone to a contest, see who can throw the farthest, stick the landing, almost like darts, he’ll say, smiling behind his glasses, the easy, pliant fingers as he holds up his knife, pretends to almost drop it. He’s drunk, but he’s still a hustler, and the mark will usually look around at his friends and laugh, but always - always - say yes. 

It’s easy to win. 

It’s even easier to take the money, something he doesn’t have to split with Seth, something that is just his. 

He practices. 

 

 

VI

Seth’s offered a job. 

Just him, not the Gecko Brothers, and he comes close to saying yes three times before he realizes that it’s not so much validation he seeks as freedom, independence, the ability to take jobs where and whenever he wants because he wants to, not because they need the money, not because it will be a kick for Richie. He doesn’t tell Vanessa, but only because she would encourage him to take anything Richie’s not involved in. There had been something there between his brother and his wife, a cooling, so that now Vanessa only speaks to Richie when she’s either on a job, her pretty smiles and fake charm, or spectacularly drunk. 

He’s asked her multiple times what’s happened, asked her what Richie did, but she only gets a look on her face like there’s something sour in her mouth, turning away from him. 

(Somewhere inside of him, he knows, he knows what it is. Somewhere inside of him, he feels ashamed, but not because it happened, only because someone else knows about him and Richie, knows that they’re closer than they seem, knows that they are connected, inseparable, knows that there are no defining lines, that there’s no way to tell where Seth stops and Richie begins.)

***

(More than anything, he feels angry that she doesn’t care enough to leave.)

***

They stop in Tucson on their way to Kansas City. Richie finds a hustler in a bar and brings him back to their motel room, fucking him against the sink in the bathroom, his teeth buried in the back of the man’s neck, his palm over the man’s mouth so he doesn’t make a noise, so he doesn’t wake up Seth in the bed just outside. Richie pays him in crisp twenty dollar bills from Seth’s wallet, goes out on the balcony to watch him bum a ride back to his beat, smokes a cigarette and then another, leaning his arms against the railing. 

Seth’s awake when he goes back inside, the TV on, but no sound, and Richie crawls under the covers and kisses Seth’s neck. He smells like sex and soap and cheap aftershave, and Seth stops himself from pulling back, from showing his distaste. 

Seth says, “There’s a job in Houston.”

Richie takes his glasses off, sets them on the nightstand. “Oh yeah? This one pay more than the last?”

“Sure,” Seth says, “But only for one of us.”

Richie makes a noise that Seth can’t translate. “Which one?” Richie’s voice is hoarse from the cigarettes, and he sounds vulnerable, fragile. 

Seth feels like an asshole. 

He turns off the TV, the room going dark. They can’t see each other, but Seth knows that Richie is looking at him, waiting for his answer. “Me.” Seth bites the inside of his cheek, feels the blood coat his tongue. 

Richie puts a hand on Seth’s in the dark, and Seth can feel his pulse, the thrum of blood inside of him, and it’s steady, slow, almost as if Richie doesn’t care, almost as if he thinks that Seth would never venture outside of their comfort zone, would never take another job that didn’t involve both of them because - as their uncle had repeatedly drilled into them - they are only as good as their name and their name is the motherfucking Gecko Brothers, not Seth, not Richie. 

They have never been individuals, they have always been together, and even Seth knows that, even Seth doesn’t want to break that up, doesn’t want to disrupt the good thing they have going here, would never ever leave Richie. His uncle has asked him to take care of Richie and Seth had done nothing but, will continue to do so long after Richie stops needing him. He gives him stability and he gives him peace and he’s the only one Richie has ever really been close to, the only one Richie will ever care about. 

The only one Richie will ever kill for, die for. 

He sighs, about to tell Richie that he would never take the job, that he would never do anything without him, but Richie opens his mouth first. 

“Maybe they need someone to hold the bag.” He turns away from Seth, his warmth dissipating in seconds. “Goodnight.” 

***

Seth takes the fucking job.

 

 

VII

In prison, Seth hears stories. 

***

Richie doesn’t come to visit, for obvious reasons, but Seth never escapes his name. In the yard, men seek him out to give him the details that have been passed along from someone on the outside, a shitty game of telephone crafted to piss him off, to eke out favors, to get him to lower his guard for one, no two, right hooks. 

He fights for money; it passes the time. 

***

In his first year, Richie tries to work a job with someone else, a mistake that costs him two broken ribs and a warrant for his arrest in Tulsa. It was piss-poor planning, nothing that Richie would ever try to pull with Seth, a fast job that net maybe fifty thousand. Seth hears that Richie had had his ear to the vault, listening inside for the right click, the right lock, when the cops had shot his partner in the face, blood hanging heavy in the air like a cloud, brain matter coating one of the tellers’ faces. 

It was a narrow escape, even for one of the Geckos. 

***

Vanessa sends the divorce papers eighteen months in, a smiley face drawn in every place he needs to sign. 

***

In his third year, he hears that Richie had prescribed to a new religion, no banks, no vaults, no locks. He’s unrecognizable to anyone that knew him before, had learned how to survive not only by himself, but by the land, holing up in some shit cabin in the middle of nowhere, talking of visions, of goddesses. It’s not any religion Seth has heard of, dead women in the desert and strange symbols carved with blood, and he dismisses it altogether, beats the first man that tells him, comes close to killing the second. 

They call him crazy, they call him a recluse, they call him the fucking Unabomber, Richie shooting animals and chopping down trees and distilling moonshine that he trades for supplies with the locals. He talks to himself and forgets to sleep and wanders around the woods looking for a woman he’s only dreamt of, her red mouth close enough to touch. 

Uncle Eddie slips Seth a phone number on a piece of paper, a shitty little burner that Richie has kept for emergencies, and he calls it ten, fifteen times to no avail, the same robotic voice asking him to leave a message every time. “Fuck you, Richard,” he says into the phone and slams down the receiver. 

He goes to bed and he dreams of fire and he dreams of Richie and he dreams of his father, the long dead voice asking Seth, “Where’s that retard brother of yours?”

***

It’s Carlos that suggests the bank in Abilene, it’s Carlos that tells him of El Rey. 

Seth promises him the Gecko Brothers and a clean, cool thirty percent, and Carlos smiles and asks him if he’s seen his brother lately. 

“He’s fine,” Seth says, automatically. “He’s fine.”

“Four and a half years is a long time,” Carlos says. He has his hands on top of the table, folded neatly together, and there’s a scuffle over by the door, an inmate having words with another, but Carlos never shifts his gaze away from Seth. 

“He’s lying low.” 

Seth had asked Richie not to tell him where he was, had asked Vanessa to look out for him, and she had looked at Seth as if he had been taking stupid pills, had told him that nobody could take care of Richie except for Richie. Sometimes, Seth doesn’t even think that that’s enough, thinks that Richie has been slowly killing himself since the day Seth was put away. 

(And, sometimes, Seth thinks that he should let him.)

And again, “He’ll be fine.”

“If you say so,” Carlos says. “Just make sure both of you are down in Mexico with the bonds. You can lay low in paradise forever.”

Seth raps his knuckles on the table once, twice. “That’s the plan, Carlito.”

 

 

VIII

Somewhere between the prison and Texas, Richie finds an old, abandoned farmhouse. They stay there until the heat dies down, surviving on canned food and well water and too-ripe apples from the overgrown trees in the front yard. They watch staticky telenovelas to brush up on their Spanish, read the leftover romance novels from the creaky bookcase in the living room. 

They plan. 

Seth is happy to be out of an eight by ten, even happier to see Richie again, and he tells him this over and over, soft murmurs into the back of Richie’s neck, into Richie’s hair, tells him that he wanted to hear his voice, that he wanted to feel him, that five years is too long to be away. Richie agrees, quietly, looks at him like he’s looking past him, through him, lets Seth kiss him without ever asking for more. 

Seth takes baths instead of showers, spends hours in the tub soaking, his fingers shriveled. He walks in the knee-high cornfields that surround the house, walks them at night when the stars are out, the moonlight bright and heavy above him. He sleeps with his back to the wall, his arm curled around Richie, and sometimes in the middle of the night, Richie will hear a sound and Seth will already be awake, a knife in his hand, ready to fight. 

Miles from where they are, Vanessa stakes out the bank, reporting back in code, old school, schematics and exit plans tucked into letters in a PO box in Tulsa, the paper smelling like she spilled perfume on it. 

Carlos rarely calls except to say that the plan is still on, that he will help them through the border whenever they are ready, whenever Seth has gotten back on his feet. 

Seth says to Richie, his mouth on Richie’s collarbone, that this will be the last job that they will ever need to pull. Richie closes his eyes, sees something, opens them back up and looks at Seth as if he’s starving, his hungry mouth, pushing and pulling, Seth’s hands cradling his face, Richie pushing him back against the wall, drinking Seth’s breath, in and in and in, his fingers sharp on Seth’s waist. 

It’s been like this since they found each other again, hungry, both of them needing the other, small little touches, Seth’s mouth on Richie’s shoulder, Richie’s fingers raking down Seth’s back, Seth forgetting to ask and Richie forgetting not to take, both of them giving the other what they need, no words between them. They are in tune, in sync, even more so than before. The time apart had cleansed them, had shown them what they really wanted, had helped them understand what felt right. 

Richie’s nails draw blood, Seth arches into his touch. 

Seth says, “Just one more, brother, and then we’re free.”

Richie pulls back and smiles. He says, “Set us free.”

 

 

IX

She had looked like a sacrifice. 

***

In the motel room, Seth places a palm on the back of Richie’s neck and Richie says, “I am me.” 

He says, “This is me.”

He says, “This is who I am.”

Seth buries his face in the fold of Richie’s collar, the smell of blood still strong on his skin, and it feels hard to breathe, it feels like there’s something he’s missing, something he needs. He doesn’t understand what’s happening, he has no idea when they became so untethered, unmoored, when Richie decided that the pull of whatever this is was stronger than their family. 

He wants to yell, he wants to scream. He wants to hit Richie. His fists ache and his mind is on fire, he can’t think, can’t process this, he wants to take Richie and he wants to go home, back to Vanessa, back to wherever they were before Seth took that job. He says Richie’s name, but Richie doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of it, the meaning of Seth’s broken voice. He kisses him, but Richie doesn’t kiss back. 

Seth says, “Please,” the word wavering between them. 

Richie looks away. 

Seth begins to sob. 

***

It all ends at the Titty Twister. 

 

 

X

Seth had picked up a heroin habit in the joint and suddenly it’s July and he’s lost a year, in Mexico taking pot shots at bodegas, scraping the bottom of the barrel for only a few hundred pesos. He’s lost Richie, forgets every day between the lighter and the smooth hit of the needle that they chose to leave each other, wakes up and Kate is over him, her cool hands on his skin and he’s saying Richie’s name and she’s telling him to go back to sleep and it’s easy to do that, to forget, even easier not to dream. 

He starts seeing things, just like his brother. 

***

He takes a hit, and it’s like suddenly being able to breathe, his eyes are open, his heart, his veins, falling back against the bed and curling into the warmth inside of him, his knees to his chest, his mouth swollen and raw. He feels Richie beside him and he knows that it’s the drugs but he doesn’t care, reaches out for Richie’s hand, pulling it across him, Richie's nose in the crook of Seth’s neck. He’s missed this, missed Richie, and a little part of him keeps telling him, over and over, that this is his fault, that this is all his fault, the same little piece of him that craves the drugs. 

Richie says, “Come home,” his lips on Seth’s hairline, his lips behind Seth’s ear. 

He doesn’t know what home is anymore, he doesn’t know where to even begin. 

Richie feels real, feels solid, and Seth aches, wants so badly to curl into him, wants so badly to turn around and swallow Richie whole, his fingers digging deep into the comforter, his nails biting through the sheets. 

Richie says, “It’s time to come home, Seth.”

“No,” he says, and he’s not sure if it’s even audible between his clenched teeth, a gasp, a murmur, a noise that starts deep in the pit of his stomach and escapes through his mouth. “No.”

And when Seth closes his eyes, the feel of Richie’s arms disappear. 

***

He tells everyone that his brother is dead. 

The Mexican women selling goods in the market, looking at him blankly, understanding but not caring, he tells them that his brother died a year ago, in some bar just over the line, on this side of the border. He laughs when he says it, and his teeth are painfully white, painfully sharp. 

The Mexican women look past him, as if he’s not even there. 

***

He’s back in their father’s house. He re-assembles, he cleans, he sits there under his father’s stopwatch and trembles, sweat licking down the sides of his face. The guns are his father’s, a distraction, the pain that feels like fire on his back, the pinched and split skin from where his father’s belt bit into him. 

Richie never gets hit, but only because their father thinks he’s stupid, thinks he’s slow, thinks the school moved him up a few grades because they couldn’t deal with him, didn’t have the capacity to handle Richie’s habits, his peculiarities. Their father had never touched him, but he also never felt anything more than contempt, so it’s strange that Richie had modeled his criminal activity after his father’s, what Seth used to think was an homage before he found out what Richie had done. But it’s also not so strange, Richie becoming a boxman because it suited him, because he was good at it, a fucking natural.

Mostly, Seth thinks Richie became their father because - of the two of them - he was the only one mean enough, the only one who cared less about others, the only one who was a fucking psychopath. 

His father hits the back of his head, a reminder to keep watching his hands, and Seth fumbles with the hilt, almost drops the gun. His hands are weary, his head is full, he wants so badly to walk away from this, to go and lay down in their childhood bedroom curled next to Richie, listening to music or playing video games or pouring over one of their father’s old dirty magazines. He finishes. Too slow. 

“Do it again,” his father says, his voice low and unforgiving. 

Seth closes his eyes. 

***

Opens them again. 

This is Phoenix. Or Cheyenne. Or maybe Portland, Richie taking turns beating the shit out of Seth because Seth has asked him to, because Seth needs it, because it’s all part of the plan. Richie had watched their father enough times to know exactly where to hit, to know exactly where Seth’s defenses are, where Seth is weakest. 

Richie pulls his fist back, and Seth swallows blood. It’s easy to disappear from here, to get lost in some place other than where it hurts. When he was little, with their father, Seth used to think about running away with Richie, the money he used to save underneath the floorboards in their room, not enough, never enough. 

A little older, Seth started to realize what his father did, how he earned his money, and he would dream up ways of stealing it, funding his new life with Richie, wherever they could go, wherever they could escape their father. This was before he knew of the debts, of the fact that as soon as his father would bring anything in, it would go back out again, a cycle of drinks, women, and casinos. 

This was before his father was kicked out of Houston. 

This was before the fire. 

Richie hits him on the jaw and Seth sees stars and all of a sudden it’s their father’s voice coming out of Richie’s mouth, “Pay attention.”

Portland had been a bruise on his face in the shape of Richie’s hand. Cheyenne had been a couple of love taps, nothing too serious. In Phoenix, Richie had cracked a couple of Seth’s ribs, scratched his fingernails down Seth’s face to draw blood, drugged him to slow his breathing, all so Seth could play dead for the mark. 

It had been real, almost too real, and after they had taken the money and holed up in some shit motel a couple of states away, Richie had locked himself in the bathroom and swallowed a handful of pills because he couldn’t forget the feel of Seth’s blood on his hands, the look of Seth as he lay there, cold, lifeless, gone. Seth had busted in, the couple in the next room pounding on the wall, yelling about the noise, and Seth had stuck his fingers down Richie’s throat and made him throw everything up, Richie choking and coughing and crying, telling him that he didn’t want to do that again, hurt Seth again, that he doesn’t care about the money, that he never cared about any of this, that he just wants to be here, with Seth. 

And Seth had promised, had wiped the sweat from Richie’s face with the palm of his hand and told him that he would never leave, would never do that to Richie, not like their mother. 

“I’m not her,” Seth had said, and Richie had placed his face against Seth’s shoulder, his mouth on Seth’s neck. Seth had said it one more time, a promise to himself, his voice a whisper, and Richie had felt heavy against him then, a burden. 

In Cheyenne or Portland or wherever, Richie’s fist presses tight against Seth’s chest, and Seth’s breath is knocked out of him. He feels broken, crippled, he feels like his whole body is on fire. Richie smiles, and for a moment Seth looks up and his sees his father there. 

Richie says, “Do it again.”

***

(Four years after Richie was born, their mother had kissed them both goodnight, closed the door to their bedroom, and climbed up the stairs to their father’s study. There was a safe there, sometimes filled with money, most of the time not, tucked into the back corner behind a rickety old desk. In it, she had found an old .22 rifle, already loaded with shells. 

It had been their father’s hunting rifle, the same one Richie had taken with him when he became a recluse. Afterwards, their father had kept it, only because - and this he had said to Seth when he was older, when Seth had talked back one too many times, when he was a little too mouthy - there was no use in getting rid of a perfectly good gun. 

She had taken the rifle into the bathroom with her, had propped it between her legs while she lay fully-clothed in the bathtub, had pulled the trigger with no hesitation, no second thought. 

After the shot, Seth and Richie had found her. With her blood on their pajamas, their hands, their skin, they had waited on the porch steps for hours before their father had come home. Richie had fallen asleep against Seth, his thumb in his mouth, and Seth had held him, never making a sound, never even moving until the car’s headlights raked over the front yard.)

 

 

XI

Kate leaves to find her brother. She takes the drugs with her, dumps them on the side of the road before she crosses the border, kicks up the sand around it, screams her frustration into the desert. She takes Seth with her, too, and he sits slumped in the passenger seat, out of it, too stoned to care about what she’s doing, pulling himself out of the car when she falls to her knees and starts to cry. 

“Hey,” he says, and puts an arm around her. He’s seeing two of everything, two Kates with dirty hands pressed to their faces, mascara running down their cheeks.

Two Kates turning to him and saying, “Why do you have to be such a fuck-up?”

He laughs, slowly, and it feels like liquid coming out of his mouth. “You and my old man would have a lot to talk about,” he says, and then closes his eyes. 

When he opens them again, they’re at the line for the border, cops and drug dogs and people wandering between the cars, selling pinatas and candy and Mexican Coke. He feels like he’s on fire, like he needs some air, and he opens the door right before he vomits, nothing in his stomach, so it’s thin and watery and it burns, his chest aching. 

Kate uses her cross and her Bible and her best smile to win over the Border Patrol, tells them her brother has food poisoning, Seth moaning in the passenger seat, his palm flat on his stomach. As soon as they cross, Kate stops at the nearest motel and thrusts dirty, crumpled twenties at the front desk, asks not to be disturbed for a couple of days, at least. 

***

She leaves. 

She never says goodbye. 

(When Seth wakes up from the withdrawal a few days later, he finds that she’s taken the money and the car, leaving him stranded at the motel with nothing but the gun they had snuck across the border. If nothing else, he’s proud of her for that.)

***

It’s painful, and Seth keeps fading in and out of consciousness, twisting the sheets and gripping his skin and crying out for Kate, for Richie. It hurts and it hurts and Seth bites his lip until he bleeds, a fleeting distraction, and he feels a cool hand against his face and when he looks up his mom is standing over him. She says his name and he feels the wetness of his cheeks and she smiles and leans down to kiss the arch of his eyebrow. 

She smells the same. 

He says, “Mom,” and his voice sounds like something biting it’s way out of his mouth, like it hurts, and it does, and he reaches up to touch her and she feels solid against his fingers and he wants so badly to fold himself against her like he used to when he was small, he wants so badly to just reach up and let her carry him. 

He says her name again, and then, “It hurts.” 

She says, “I know, baby,” and kisses him in the same exact spot. Her thumb traces his face, and he’s still crying, the tears welling up in his eyes, the image of her blurring and then becoming clear and then blurring again. She’s watery before him, a mess of colors and shadows and lights, and she looks like she did the last time he saw her alive, the night she climbed into the bathtub and shot herself in the head. 

Afterwards, when they had found her, her dress had been soaked through with so much blood, that they couldn’t remember what color it was supposed to be. She smiles, and Seth reaches out to hold the fabric in his hands, the white a shocking contrast against his dirty skin. 

He blinks, and she’s blood red for a moment. Only for a moment. 

“Are you real?” He whispers, but she doesn’t answer him. 

“Are you really here?” He says, but she shakes her head, not an answer to his question, but a dismissal, her hands on his face shaking his thoughts clear, trying to get him to focus. 

She looks at him for a moment, the overhead light shining a halo around her hair. “Seth,” she says, and and Seth closes his eyes and then opens them again, the pain curling around him like a snake. “Seth, baby, where’s Richard?”

Seth feels like he’s skipping time, like things are happening out of order. He reaches up for his mother again and she’s not there and then she is, the feel of her solidifying against his skin. He blinks and she’s gone, blinks again and she’s there smiling at him, her face a perfect mask. 

“Mom?”

She flickers. “Where’s Richard, Seth?” Her hand on his face feels like a fist, her nails biting into his skin. “Where’s Richard?”

He pulls back from her, and the facade falls like water. Just before he succumbs to the pain, just before he passes out, he sees her clearly, the shape of her body, the red of her lips, her white teeth, almost like fangs. 

He says her name like a curse. 

She flattens her mouth, disappointed. 

***

She visits him again the next night, and the night after that. She doesn’t pretend to be anybody else, but she does keep asking him about Richie. She’s been looking for him, he’s run off and for everything she knows about him, for all the thoughts she’s read, all the memories he’s allowed her to see, she doesn’t know where he’s gone. He’s hiding from her. 

She sits on the bed beside Seth, trailing her fingers down the length of his leg. “Where’s Kate?”

“Finding her brother,” Seth says, and pulls away from her. “Don’t you have people to eat? Why are you bothering me?”

“I was hoping you could lead me to Richard,” Santanico says. “He’s being very uncommunicative.” She says something in Spanish under her breath, something Seth doesn’t catch.

Seth gets out of bed, pulls his shirt over his head and rummages in his bag for a new one. “You two having a falling out?” He pauses, amends the tone in his voice. “Not that I care, I never really thought vampires were his flavor when it came to women.”

She laughs, and it sounds cruel. “I’m not a vampire, Seth.”

“Whatever.” 

She sighs and gets up, watches him change clothes. “I have to give it to you, though, you’re much stronger than your brother. It took me almost a month to reach you.” 

It was unspoken that the only reason why she could was the withdrawal, the bend in reality, the lack of defenses. Seth could kill Kate for letting him get like this, no matter how clean he feels, no matter how much better it is to be off the drugs. 

(He still craves it, still wants to taste the heroin, would fucking kill for some, but it’s so close to what Santanico is, so close to what Richie is, that it’s enough for Seth to stay clean. He doesn’t want to become what they are, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t understand what it feels like.)

“Yeah, well,” Seth says, “Richie always did have a soft spot for the crazies.” He sits at the table, his hands itching for his gun. 

Santanico sits in the chair across from him, her short dress riding up her thighs. “I think he just has a soft spot for me,” she says. “And you.” She smiles sharply. 

Seth looks away. 

“He doesn’t think he is, but he’s a key part to this revolution. And I need him to make it work.” She reaches out and grabs Seth’s face, forcing him to look at her. “I need him and he needs you.”

She feels real, even if she’s not, even if he’s only sitting here talking to himself, he can feel her fingers digging into his cheeks, he can feel her breath on his face. Seth breathes in, his whole body on alert, strung up tight from her touch, his fingers curling into fists. “And you’re willing to share?”

She lets him go, and it feels like she drew blood. “If that’s what it takes,” she says. “Then yes.”

Seth nods. “Okay,” he says, and then again, “Okay.”

***

He puts on a suit for the first time in months. 

It feels like he’s finally awake. 

 

 

XII

Their old house was bulldozed to make way for a new development, cookie cutter houses with blue trim, white siding, brick fronts. Seth had walked around the house on their lot, but found no indication of anyone living there, no toys in the yard, no lawn mower, no gardening supplies. He jimmies open the lock on the back door, easy, and steps into the stale air. There are no dishes on the table, no food in the fridge, and when Seth walks upstairs, he can’t find a single item of clothing in the first few bedroom closets. 

Richie is squatting in the master bedroom, lucky that the water is still turned on, even luckier that someone has decided to keep paying utilities for the vacant house. He’s in the bathroom when Seth finds him, a towel around his waist, shaving cream ruining the bottom half of his face. He looks at Seth in the mirror, unsurprised. 

“I knew she’d send you,” he says, running a razor down one of his cheeks, shaking it in the bowl of water in the sink. “You’re the only one who could figure out where I was.”

“I’m your brother,” Seth explains. Like it’s obvious, like Richie should know that Seth will always be able to find him because he, Seth, has known Richie since the day he was born, has always been able to read him. 

“And you’re here to tell me to go back to Santanico?” Richie asks, his eyebrows raising above his glasses. “I’d be worried about what they’re putting in your drugs, brother.”

Seth looks away, didn’t know Richie knew anything about it, but not entirely shocked that he does. It’s always been Richie’s job to know everything, he’s the tactician, and he needs to know every element, every angle, needs to be able to keep every plan from failing. It must have been easy to keep tabs on Seth because Seth wasn’t exactly careful, wasn’t exactly hiding from anybody, but it still sends a surge of anger through him, anger that Richie would have to spy on Seth to know where he is and what he’s doing, anger that whatever this is that’s between them has gotten this far. 

The heat of the bathroom is itching him, pulling at his clothes, and he wants so badly to just leave, to finally tell Richie that he’s done with this, he’s done playing brother’s keeper, he’s freeing Richie from him, from Richie himself. “I’m not here for her,” he says, at last, looking back at him. 

“Oh, so you have another job lined up, then?”

“Fuck, Richard,” Seth says, and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to play games with you, okay? I just wanted to see you, to make sure you’re alright. She had me worried, I thought you might have been in trouble.”

Richie shrugs, scrapes away another layer of shaving cream. His eyes flash briefly, snake-like, and then he smiles. “I know how to take care of myself.”

“Yeah, I bet you do,” Seth mutters. “Who are you feeding on these days? Stray dogs? Little old ladies?”

Richie laughs. “So suddenly you care about how I’m surviving?”

“Santanico didn’t exactly need to show you how to survive, though, did she?” Seth says. “You were already a killer before you met her.”

Richie makes a noise in his throat that sounds like a growl. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

“Look,” Seth says, “I get that you think you killed dad to protect me, but I don’t understand why you think that’s okay, Richard. Dad was an asshole, but he was our father, and you don’t kill family.”

Richie turns to him, half of his face stark white under the bathroom lights. “Is that what this is about? You think because I killed Dad that I could kill you one day?”

Seth doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. He looks at Richie and Richie looks back and it’s there, painfully obvious, that Seth has been afraid that he is no longer important to Richie, that Richie could kill him without a second thought and that would be it, no more family, no more Gecko Brothers. He doesn’t know how this happened between them, why it’s happened, but he knows that it runs deeper than Santanico, runs deeper than ancient Mayan curses. 

Richie’s mouth is a straight line, a blur across his face. He picks up a towel and wipes the shaving cream off, turns away from Seth, looking down. “Fuck you, Seth,” he says. “Fuck you if you think that.”

“Richie,” Seth says, but Richie moves past him, out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. He picks up the clothes on the bed, starts putting them into the duffle bag by the door, packing up to leave again. 

Seth comes close enough to touch, the first time since they left the Titty Twister, and Richie stills as Seth places a hand on his back, the rope of muscle there straining against Richie’s skin. “Don’t go,” Seth whispers, and it’s stuck between them, Richie still and unmoving, Seth placing his other hand on Richie, turning him around. “Don’t go,” he says again, and can’t help himself, doesn’t want to stop, places his mouth on Richie’s and finally - fucking finally - inhales. 

It feels like it’s the first time, Richie putting both hands on Seth’s face and pulling him closer, Seth pushing and pushing, and they’re back to being teenagers, fooling around when Uncle Eddie wasn’t home, or even when he was home, shushing each other until one would eventually dissolve into laughter, loud enough to wake the dead, and they would have to abandon the soft kisses, the gentle touches, and pretend that they were sleeping, Seth in Richie’s bed because he still had nightmares, even into late teenagehood, waking up screaming and crying from a dream he never remembered. 

Richie drops his towel, moving backwards onto the bed, Seth moving with him, their hands and feet and hips pushing, pulling, fighting each other. Seth kisses his way down Richie’s stomach and Richie’s fingers are in Seth’s hair, and Seth bites down, hard, on the inside of Richie’s thigh and Richie makes a noise that Seth has never heard before, and Seth swallows him whole and Richie is bucking against his mouth, impatient, and Seth places one of his hands on Richie’s abs, pressing down. 

Richie says Seth’s name and it sounds like he’s crying, gasping, his voice wavering between them, and Seth has fucking missed this, being able to be with someone who has known him this intimately almost his entire life. It’s more than just their blood, it’s more than just sex, they’re inseparable, they’re unstoppable, no matter what Richie has become, no matter what Richie is. 

They come together, Seth laughing about how he hasn’t come in his pants since ninth grade, watching the girls lacrosse team practice. Richie laughs, too, and it’s something Seth has missed hearing, and he leans against him, kisses him slowly, softly, Richie’s mouth warm and inviting. 

“I’d never hurt you,” Richie says to him when they pull away from each other. He leans his forehead on Seth’s, still wanting to touch, not wanting to let him go.

“I know,” Seth says, and it’s not a con, not a lie, Richie can hear it in his tone, can feel it in the rhythm of his heartbeat. 

“I’d never ask you to become one of us if you didn’t want to,” Richie says. “I didn’t have a choice, but you do.”

“Yes,” Seth says. “I do.” 

Richie smiles, bringing his hand up to trace Seth’s cheekbone, the soft skin just under his eye. 

“You’re going to need help,” Seth says, his voice like a promise. 

“Sometimes.” Richie shrugs. “Santanico has a plan.”

“You haven’t been what she has for as long. You’re going to need somebody who can watch over you in the daytime, somebody who can cover your tracks.” Seth rolls on his back, looks up at the ceiling. “She can only do so much.”

Richie hesitates, doesn’t want to ask. “You don’t have to do this,” he says. “You can still pretend I’m dead.”

Seth looks over at him. “I can’t, Richie. I can’t leave you again, it will kill me.”

“I’m not holding you to your promise.” Richie’s eyes are dark, haunting. He’s stronger than he used to be, but he doesn’t look it, doesn’t look any different, except for the change that rolls over him sometimes, the scales and claws and fangs. And the hungry look he gets, the memory of his fangs in Seth’s neck, hot, heavy, bloodthirsty. 

Seth sighs, the sound loud in the quiet room. “I am,” he says, and presses another kiss to Richie’s mouth. 

 

 

XIII

Seth brings him food.

Mostly, they’re dates he’s brought back with him, men and women he’s led on, small kisses at a bar after a couple of beers, Seth promising a good night, an even better morning, his charming smile and irresistible mouth. He makes sure that nobody will be missing them for a few days, makes sure that they don’t have any immediate family that will worry, and slips something in their drinks to make them a little more pliable, a little more suggestible. 

Richie doesn’t like the taste of the drug in their blood, grimaces every time, but - after the first one - Seth can’t bear to watch their faces, their slow realization, their horror, at the sight of Richie’s change, his scales, his fangs, his claws. It cuts down on the screaming, it’s like they just go to sleep and never wake up, and it makes Richie ridiculously loopy afterwards, his doped up grin and the way he buries close to Seth, his nose leaving bloody prints against Seth’s neck. 

Seth gets used to it after a while, even if he couldn’t watch Richie the first few times, couldn’t bear the way he would gorge himself, their bodies jerking with each bite, each swallow. It’s just another job, this one a little longer, this one a little more gruesome. 

Like everything, it becomes normal. 

 

XIV

Richie and Santanico plan. 

Seth’s never been fond of revolutions, but he lets them reign him in, if only for the fact that he still needs the excitement of a job to come from somewhere, if only for the fact that he still needs the money. He’s more than an accessary, more than just the bitch boy, even if Santanico doesn’t see it that way, lets him have Richie when he wants him, but doesn’t like it, lets him bring them food, even if she hardly ever eats. 

She’s preoccupied with the war. She’s had five centuries to plan her escape, but never thought past that. She doesn’t like the odds, never figured that their victory would take this long, and Richie helps her as much as he can, plans and schemes, a master tactician, but hasn’t been able to give her what she wants. 

She leaves, comes back, leaves again, and it’s days or months or years sometimes. She’s never been sensitive to the human concept of time. 

Richie and Seth stay together, have spent enough lifetimes apart, and it doesn’t seem to bother Santanico, when Richie lets her go and stays behind with Seth. It’s never been a competition, even if it feels that way sometimes, even if Seth seems to follow Richie around when Santanico’s gone, follow his lead, do whatever he wants to do, the push and pull of their relationship, the history that’s between them. 

It’s never been a competition, even if Seth has felt like he’s been battling for Richie’s soul ever since they robbed that bank in Abilene. He’s not sure where he falls on the moral side of things any longer, but then again he was never really sure where he fell to begin with. 

He has Richie and Richie has him, and that seems like it’s always been enough. 

That seems like it’s all they’ll ever need. 

 

 

XV

Seth grows older.

Richie never does.


End file.
